Tomy's New MPG Series: Transformers

I see you are familiar with that, Nigels... What do you say about the price of approx. USD 176? Why are those so expensive? I see they don't move (no battery needed), so what's the catch? Are they massive and made of some costly materials? Shinkanlion transforming trains I could understand (maybe), but what's the point of a static train that you could change into... whatever? It seems I'm missing the point; I don't know anything about it, actually, so I may ask some silly questions...

I don't know what "bots" are either, but never mind. Nevertheless, your story of "Star Wars cross-over transformer that transforms from a Death Star into a Darth Vader bot" intrigued me... The Death Star transforms into Vader, wow?! That must be something! Surely better than a classic Shinkansen transforming into a... clumsy funny robot! 

I'm not particularly familiar with the whole world of transformers, I do remember them the first time round when they were pretty cool diecast models with only a few plastic bits on them rather than the current crop of plastic 'movie' spin-offs.  Personally I preferred the originals as they were real toys made for playing with and made to last, but that's nothing new similar things have happened in many brands/franchises.

I have to admit I wasn't fully aware of the cost of that particular model as I've not bought anything from Japan for some time and therefore had no clue to the current exchange rate.  It does on the surface sound expensive, but as you say in a later post it is an MPG (Masterpiece blah blah) which is almost certainly one of the things that contributes to that price tag as it is likely a high quality model for collectors rather than a toy for kiddies.  I suspect it will also be quite large as looking at the description it talks about extra parts make up the various parts of the model, so it is probably just more than a single power car.  I would also put money on it maybe being made of metal/resin parts rather than just cheap plastics.

Having said that it is still way more than I'd pay for a transformer no matter how nice it is, well unless I manage to win the lottery or something in which case I'll have 10 an a flight to go pick them up in person lol!